Essays in Librarianship and BibliographyGarnett, Richard
Science
Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography
Garnett, Richard
Bibliography -- Methodology; British Museum; Library science
The Elysian Fields were apparently at that time situated in Liverpool,
whither Panizzi had repaired, provided with introductions from Ugo
Foscolo to Dr. Shepherd and to William Roscoe, the men who, with James
Martineau, have given Liverpool a place in the history of letters.
Liberality of opinion united him to both these eminent persons, and his
Italian origin and Italian enthusiasm necessarily proved the most potent
recommendations to the historian of Lorenzo de' Medici and Leo X. From
Roscoe, indeed, he received all the affection of a parent, but these
were the days of the Liverpool scholar's adversity. Panizzi,
nevertheless, probably owed to him the introduction to Lord Brougham
which proved the turning-point in his career. He is said to have been of
great assistance to Brougham in the Wakefield trial. In 1828, furnished
with further introductions from Roscoe to Samuel Rogers and Sir Henry
Ellis, he quitted Liverpool to assume, at Brougham's invitation, the
post of Professor of Italian in University College, London. He had
supported himself while in Liverpool as a teacher of Italian; little
record remains of the struggle, but it must have been severe. The
present writer has heard him say, while lamenting the miserable salaries
paid to supernumerary assistants in the Museum thirty years ago, that he
had notwithstanding maintained himself upon much less. One indispensable
acquisition he made at Liverpool, a ready command of our language,
entirely unacquainted with it as he was upon his arrival in this
country. Neither his accent nor his idiom was ever free from traces of
his foreign extraction, but when he wrote the latter circumstance was
rather favourable to him. The peculiarity of manner contributed to the
general impression of originality, and the massiveness of his thoughts
was agreeably relieved by the raciness of his style.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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